Postal services in Europe are halting shipments to the United States just days before a major customs change takes effect.
According to reporting from CNBC, the freeze is tied to former President Donald Trump’s executive order that officially ends the de minimis exemption for foreign packages valued under $800. The order affects every country, not just China, and takes effect this Friday.
Shipments under that threshold had entered the U.S. without customs duties or detailed clearance procedures for over a century. That ends now. Nine countries (Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Switzerland) are pausing outbound U.S. deliveries as a result.
Their systems can’t keep up with the new rules, and carriers don’t know how the customs fees will be calculated, who collects them, or how to transmit that info to U.S. authorities.
DHL, Correos, and La Poste freeze mail as confusion spreads
DHL issued a statement on Friday confirming that Deutsche Post and DHL Parcel Germany have stopped taking parcels bound for the U.S. “Key questions remain unresolved,” the company said, “particularly regarding how and by whom customs duties will be collected in the future, what additional data will be required, and how the data transmission to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection will be carried out.” The only option left is DHL Express, which still operates but costs a lot more.
Correos, the national postal service of Spain, said in a statement that it only received the full compliance requirements from U.S. authorities on August 15.
“This situation forces Correos, along with all postal operators that manage shipments destined for the United States, to substantially modify their processes and increase shipment controls to implement the new customs requirements, significantly impacting international postal logistics and e-commerce flows,” the agency said. The freeze began Monday, with no timeline for when it’ll lift.
Belgium’s national carrier said its pause would begin on Saturday, and France’s La Poste said it would suspend U.S. shipments starting Monday. Over in the north, Finland’s Posti stopped shipping to the U.S. last Saturday. A few days later, they said they couldn’t even process gifts or letters anymore because, in their words, “several airlines have now refused to transport any postal items to the United States.”
The suspension mostly affects shipments below $800. Items like letters and gifts were initially excluded, but that’s no longer the case in some countries. Airlines backing out of transport agreements are adding even more pressure to already-strained postal systems.
Small European businesses feel the blow first
The sudden pause is expected to hit Europe’s smaller exporters the hardest. Americans who shop directly from small European sellers, not big-name retailers, are the ones caught in the middle. Most large companies, especially those with operations in the U.S., don’t use de minimis to begin with. They ship goods in bulk containers to U.S. warehouses and pay tariffs.
But platforms like Temu and Shein, which leaned heavily on de minimis, saw major price spikes and weaker demand once the China exemption ended back in May. Now, with Europe losing the same benefit, a similar impact is likely for sellers using standard mail.
None of the countries gave a firm restart date. All said the suspensions are temporary. But the problem isn’t just bureaucracy. It’s tech. None of their current postal systems were designed to track new U.S. customs requirements or deliver detailed parcel data to American officials.
Even if their tech catches up, the bigger question is who pays the customs fees and how they’ll be collected. No one has that answer; not the carriers, not the postal offices, and not the airlines refusing the cargo.
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